


Quick Justice

by Lyssandra_Med



Series: Lovingly Dysfunctional [10]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, F/F, Familial Justice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:21:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23248402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyssandra_Med/pseuds/Lyssandra_Med
Summary: Delphi was hurt, and what was Hermione but a mother looking to right that wrong?---Part of Lovingly Dysfunctional (series will contain any of my Bellamione one shots w/ Delphi as their child) but not related to any of the others at all.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Bellatrix Black Lestrange
Series: Lovingly Dysfunctional [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1456105
Kudos: 69





	Quick Justice

**Author's Note:**

> un-edited.

“Delphi? Delphi honey, what happened?”

The softness of the voice -  _ both tired and concerned all in one _ \- reached her from its position in the hallway to the left. It was dark out still, not yet even past midnight, but the thinness of the light from between the crack of a bathroom door was enough to illuminate her visitor. Enough to reveal the shock and horror on her face.

Hermione, or  _ ‘Mom,’ _ whenever Delphi felt inclined to call her that. To say she was -  _ for now _ \- inclined to remain silent was more an understatement at the moment. More a truth. More but not enough but not  _ too little _ to say she  _ wanted _ to lose the ability.

She wanted to crawl away. She wanted to fall down off the face of the earth and pretend that she had never even existed to begin with. She wanted the memory of her life to be struck from the minds of everyone she had ever met, and to leave it that way forever.

The tears that spilled down her cheeks were long cold. The rivulets had run dry, had tasted of salt and fear and that little innocent emotion that blossomed under cold words to something more. To something worse. Seeing Hermione, seeing the woman who had spent half her life raising her from nothing to  _ something _ was hard. It brought more tears. Released the waterworks and broke all the valves that kept things shut.

Delphi never cried. Not in front of her family, never in front of her Mother, never in front of Hermione.

Never in front of anyone of authority.

Not even Nymphadora, even though the Metamorph was likely the only one who could understand. Not that Delphi didn’t  _ care _ about her cousin or the Hell she went through, but because she  _ knew _ they were much the same.

Both of them were daughters to a Black, both of them were the children of women who by all rights should have been dead and gone so many years ago. Both of them were the remnants of a past that many fought to forget.

Nymphadora, the daughter of a hidden monster. Aunt ‘Dromeda had never revealed the depths to which she had fallen after Uncle Ted died. Her eyes said enough, and Hermione had chided her enough times when she was younger and far more curious.

Delphi didn’t know how many Slytherin students had been left to live with a family that had burned to ashes. She didn’t know how much or how often her Aunt succumbed to the temptation to use Fiendfyre. How many wrathful families had been left behind? How many children had grown up cold and forgotten due to her actions? How many of them had absolutely  _ hated _ Nymphadora for the crime of living when their own daughters or fathers had not?

How many of her own peers hated her? How many of them despised her? She wasn’t sure. Couldn’t be, not with how many kept to themselves and turned away in disgust. But those who did make themselves known were very clear that they hated her for the crime of being born to a woman who peddled in madness and deceit.

A woman who had been known for killing and nothing else. A woman who had managed to weasel her way out of Azkaban by only the thinnest of margins. A woman who had managed to play both sides of the war in service to her House. 

A woman who had brought up a young child who seemed -  _ for all that the world could see _ \- to be nothing more than a carbon copy of her insanity, despite the tempered other half that had somehow found it within their heart to care for and love her.

Delphi hated it all. Hated them all for their prejudice and blind thoughts. In turn, they all hated her. 

And now she was here, at home, late into the night and huddled against a corner of the bathroom while clutching shaking knees against her chest. The curls of her blue hair were scattered and tangled, wet with tears that stuck and clung without thought to her comfort or decisions. Shivering like some timid leaf that awaited a foot to crumble her into oblivion.

“I… I just- it, it wasn’t supposed-” Her voice choked back, blocked by sobs and fresh tears, a shake leaving her to hunch forward and pin back any chance of breath. Hermione moved as fast as she could, the door bashing completely open with frightful velocity, knees skidding as she came to a halt beside her. Two strong arms wrapped around her, a heat against her side and hand against her head.

Delphi broke, and told her all there was to tell.

\---

Bellatrix was truly incensed. Beyond that even, if Hermione had it right. The witch at her side looked to have been born from her namesake, a warrior now hellbent on madness and destruction that mirrored the faux-self she had adopted during their service in the War. Her hair, which was normally kept coiffured into thick ringlets and stylish curls were frizzed and maddened, the lengths all haphazardly bent into odd directions that twisted and turned into knots quite gordian in nature.

Even Bellatrix’s eyes were ready for a fight. Blazing fire, rings of blue and purple that flashed whenever the magic within her veins sensed the anger boiling closer and closer to the edge of her limits.

Hermione loved all of it.

Hated the reason for it, as it were, hated that her child needed to be harmed to see it in action, but loved it all the same.

She  _ relished _ that fire. Felt the same heat within her chest, lived beneath the same madness now that they were wed, fought and clawed for every little bit of adventure that sparked when she had a purpose and a reason to release herself from the confines of normal society. Trapaising around as an Auror was tough work. Being a Director was not, and left her with no chance to join a mission or find something like adrenaline, no times when she could recapture that childhood feeling of fighting someone stronger for  _ something _ and pushing past whatever boundaries were in her way.

But now Bellatrix was right pissed, Hermione following swiftly, her tempered sorrows and nurturing enthusiasm for logic and learning all turned towards immediate aggression. High spirits, hungry for blood.

Focused down upon one man.

Focused down upon one idiot. Or at least she assumed him to be one if the look she caught was good enough to complete the whole picture. She didn’t have very long to compile an opinion on him, not once Bellatrix knocked upon the entryway and he barely cracked it open. The door closed just as swiftly as Bellatrix’s knock, and then fell just the same to her incessant boot against the wooden boards. He was pimply, she mused. Young as well, if the way he looked was anything to go by.

It wasn’t, but finding a Muggle wallet with an identification card that confirmed his age as nineteen was more than enough. Old enough, grown-up enough to have known right from wrong and that  _ this _ was not  _ that, _ and old enough to reap whatever madness grew from the hatred he had sown. 

And as soon as harvest came Hermione planned on leaving this earth salted and barren forevermore.

The first shot levied his direction was a warning more than anything else. A flash of green that was only intended to make him  _ scared, _ to show him just exactly what the true meaning of terror was. An exercise in elucidating him to the way of the House of Black, and inform him that no, they were  _ not _ fucking about, and no, they would  _ not _ take an apology at face value.

Not after what he had done to their daughter.

The fury beside her groused, unhinged and dripping with anger, “Do it, love. Make it hurt.” The words were a sing-song, a lullaby, sweet and beating to the  _ something _ within their chests.

It was loud. It was a terror. Red and crackling, the spell that many assumed she could never hope to wield, the spell that most believed had belonged solely to the demon beside her. Oh how very wrong all her detractors were. Oh how much she  _ loved _ this. She could wield the spell with startling efficiency. They were all bloody wrong, they all overlooked her, missed that she could be careful and circumspect and  _ precise. _ She could overload someone and bring them down into panting relief, their loins wet and words of sweet grace passing through their throat.

She could make someone call her a Goddess.

Or she could make someone call her the Devil.

Make someone wish that they had never thought to pick on a young woman or take out their misbegotten anger on someone who had never sought to harm them or another.

She could make them scream.

_ She could make it  _ **_hurt._ **

She wove that spell again and again, waited with patience while Bellatrix revived them, awoke them, brought them back into living so she could subsume them beneath  _ her _ world, and  _ her _ pain, and  _ her _ abject mastery of magic deemed so dark as to be unforgivable.

They left, eventually. Smiles on their faces and hearts beating in sync, hand in hand and no sweat upon their brows. They left with promises of fealty towards the House of Black, they left him with a tattoo in the shape of a raven emblazoned on his chest, with Unbreakable words and ticking bombs.

They left.

Delphi recovered.

And Hermione spent that night savouring the iron taste of her wife lapping up the spillage of magic. A wrong made right. Bellatrix beneath her, the world once more upon the axis she desired.


End file.
